Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Assessing the Readiness to Move into the Cloud
Leire Orue-Echevarria, Juncal Alonso, Marisa Escalante, and Stefan Schuster
TECNALIA. ICT / European Software Institute Divison
Parque Tecnológico Ed. #202. E-48170 Zamudio. Spain
{leire.orue-echevarria,juncal.alonso,marisa.escalante,
stefan.schuster}@tecnalia.com
Abstract.
The race to keep software compatible and optimal with respect to the
latest trends is hard. 90% of software cost can be due to maintenance, and 75%
on developing new features to stay competitive and relevant. The industry
progresses through periods of incremental development interspersed with true
paradigm shifts. Legacy software must keep up the pace.
At present we are experiencing one of these paradigm shifts, as remarked by
the EC [1] “The speed of change in Internet technologies continues to be
impressive. Software is becoming more and more pervasive: it runs on the
devices that we use every day ... [opening] a new world of possible
applications”. Today, technological and business model innovation generates
large demand for the transition of legacy software towards modernization.
However, software modernization is not a trivial issue and if improperly done,
it dangers the business continuity and sustainability.
This means that for any company meditating about the transition to the new
paradigm of cloud computing, there is a need to have at its disposal an
innovative and combined technical and business analysis on the maturity and
prospect of the legacy application. The major target of this process is to identify
in advance the perspectives of the migration and pre-evaluate the performance
and business benefits with relation to the cost of the process. For the first time,
the business value will be directly attached to the technical performance.
This paper presents this aforementioned approach, being currently developed
and tested, in order to assess the maturity of an application and the convenience
of migrating to the new cloud computing paradigm or not, based on quantitative
indicators while always ensuring the company's business continuity. Following
this approach, questions such as cost and effort of the migration, impact of new
business models in the company or return of the investment will be provided in
advance of tackling the actual modernization.
1
Introduction
New developments in the way services and applications can be delivered over the
Internet have opened up huge opportunities to software vendors. The Internet is not
only getting faster and thus data is transferred in a quicker manner but it is also
becoming more reliable in what concerns transactions among customers and
providers. This is making possible the offerings of basic IT appliances such as servers
for storage or computing clusters as a service, i.e. providers provide the hardware and
infrastructure and clients provide the data. The decoupling of responsibilities
accelerates the development of new service platforms and software products.
